In the field of dentistry, stainless steel and plastic strips of various kinds have been used for many years for separating adjacent teeth during restorative dental procedures such as when filling a cavity. The strips are placed between the interproximal surfaces of a pair of adjacent teeth to provide protection from injury to an adjacent tooth while one tooth is treated. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,373,915 to Comstock discloses a resilient stainless steel band having a uniform thickness. The band is bendable into a U-shape to contact the buccal and lingual surfaces of a tooth while the adjacent tooth is treated.
Conventional strips known to the inventor have been at least ten microns in thickness and wedge the teeth apart slightly. This wedging has not been a problem when used with amalgam filling material packed between two adjacent teeth.
However, new aesthetically pleasing and structurally strong materials have been developed such as composite resin materials. One drawback of the new composite resin materials is that they cannot be packed as easily into a tooth cavity as amalgam. Therefore, the teeth are typically wedged further apart to permit packing of this material. Consequently, relatively thick tooth spacers have been used to accomplish this desired wedging. As a result, following filling and when the strips are removed, a small space or gap is left between the teeth. Any such gap or interproximal space, even when very small, is a trap for food to lodge between the teeth during chewing. This contributes to tooth cavities and gum diseases, such as periodontal disease.
Recently, composite resins have been bonded to the teeth for the purpose of correcting the bite of a patient. The composite resin may be applied to the upper surface of several teeth simultaneously and the mouth then closed in the desired therapeutic jaw position to establish the proper bite. With this approach, it is difficult to prevent the composite resin from ending up in the interproximal space between the teeth and it is also difficult to remove this resin from this space once it is there. Yet, if conventional interproximal strips are used between the teeth, they wedge adjacent teeth apart and thereby slightly change the positions of the teeth. When these strips are removed following the resin bonding treatment, the teeth return to their unwedged positions, which makes the bite no longer as accurate as desired.
A need remains for a tooth spacer which, contrary to the approach of the prior art, virtually eliminates wedging of teeth apart during use.